Had I known that Aesop’s fables were so unhinged, I would’ve turned to them long ago. Having encountered your standard-issue tortoise and hare, boy who cried wolf, town mouse and country mouse, et al.

According to “The Life of Aesop,” a text compiled in ancient Greece from a variety of legends, the man whose name is synonymous with the fable was born a slave in Phrygia (in modern-day Turkey) in the ...

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Several chapters into Aesop’s Animals: The Science Behind the Fables, zoologist and ...